Arkansas pastor’s wife turns him in after finding ‘tens of thousands’ of child porn files

An Arkansas youth pastor is facing child pornography charges after his wife reportedly found images of underage girls on his computer and turned them over to police.

According to KAIT, an affidavit filed in Jonesboro District Court on Wednesday alleged that 39-year-old First Assembly of God Pastor Tony Waller “had tens of thousands” of photos and videos of “nude or scantily clad pubescent girls” on a laptop that he shared with his wife, Angela.

Waller’s wife told detectives that she was searching for a file when she came across a folder that she did not recognize. The folder contained “thousands of images of prepubescent girls either completely nude or scantily clad,” the affidavit said.

When he was confronted by his wife, she said that he admitted having a child pornography addiction for more than 20 years.

The laptop and two hard drives were turned over to police, who arrested Waller.

Senior Pastor Matt Smith told KAIT that Waller was fired as soon as the allegations came to light. He had worked at the church since 1999.

“First of all to the best of our understanding, the allegations against Mr. Waller don’t involve anything with our church as far as we know,” Smith said. “I encourage the church to handle this with three prongs of love: focus on loving each other as a church family, show tremendous of love to his family and continue to love him.”

Waller was released on $2,500 bond. A court appearance was scheduled for June 29.

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David Edwards has served as an editor at Raw Story since 2006. His work can also be found at Crooks & Liars, and he's also been published at The BRAD BLOG. He came to Raw Story after working as a network manager for the state of North Carolina and as as engineer developing enterprise resource planning software. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidEdwards.